Dabaa: President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directed the government to clarify costs of the New Delta project to citizens, ensuring they understand the scale of the major achievements being undertaken in support of construction and development.
According to State Information Service Egypt, President El-Sisi made these remarks during the inauguration of the integrated New Delta agricultural development project. He emphasized that the project was too large to be fully explained in a 20-minute presentation and called on officials to briefly outline the pumping stations, networks, and routes that had been established.
He also requested Electricity Minister Mahmoud Esmat to present technical details on the power grid and disclose key cost components of the project. Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hani Sewilam stated that the project included two water routes. The northern source supplies 7.5 million cubic meters of treated agricultural drainage water per day via advanced tertiary treatment, in addition to 13 pumping stations.
Sewilam further elaborated that the second route extends 50 km and includes six main pumping stations, alongside internal stations distributing water across the land. Each station contains more than 13 pumps and lifts more than 9 million cubic meters of water daily. The two routes together are intended to support the cultivation of 2.2 million feddans in Egypt's Western Desert.
The minister highlighted the project as one of the world's largest agricultural developments, noting that it would help transfer water more than 170 km from east to west. President El-Sisi remarked that the State had collected and conveyed agricultural drainage water from the northern source through a man-made channel to a pumping station for the New Delta project.
Speaking at the inauguration, President Sisi explained that the water had previously been discharged into the Mediterranean Sea but is now being reused for agriculture after treatment. The president noted that the State had developed a large-scale system to collect and lift drainage water against gravity through a project spanning around 150 km and involving 14 pumping stations.
He underscored the need to provide a comprehensive explanation of the project to avoid understating the State's efforts in its implementation. The president mentioned that explaining a single pumping station would help illustrate the scale of work carried out across more than 13 additional stations in the northern and southern sections.
The system also includes excavation and lining works along a 150 km route and nearly 300 km of total aligned channels passing through the stations, as well as a water distribution network serving 2 million feddans. He added that the infrastructure cost per feddan stood at 400,000 Egyptian pounds, bringing total investment to about 800 billion pounds, and stated the project would create employment for around 2 million people annually.